Shedding a Light On The Other

Last week, frog design and the Club of Marrakech premiered a new event called “THE OTHERS”. A diverse range of guests from arts, media, business, and science backgrounds took part in what should become a “Live-Mashup to explore what ‘new’ you can get out of an event by re-combining very different topics, people and ideas. With the goal to establish a platform for interdisciplinary exchange and to draw particular attention to an out-of-the-box approach, we brought together five unusual speakers – inspirators, actually - from different backgrounds at a vaulted cellar in downtown Munich, reminiscent of a conspirative meeting place, an atmosphere triggering exchange, collaboration, and serendipity. The experiment was split into two sessions:  while in a first session the speakers each inspired the audience for ten minutes. The second part of the evening was all about creating a mashup of their perspectives and ideas, moderated and led by Andrian Kreye, Leisure and Arts editor of German Daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Speakers of the event included Bernd Kolb, a successful entrepreneur and former board member of Deutsche Telekom who recently founded the Club of Marrakech. Following the tradition of the likes of The Club of Rome, Kolb explained how his organization aims to bring together bright minds, introduce innovative platforms, and tools to help creating a sustainable future. He was followed by Peter Spiegel, founding manager of the Genisis Institute for Social Business and consultant to the likes of Muhammad Yunus and Michail Gorbatschow. Spiegel’s presentation covered social impact businesses and how they influence future economies. Judith Hufnagel, managing founder of gravity Europe, shared findings of a design research trip to the southern United States. Christian Stueckl brought two decades of Passionsfestspiele Oberammergau to life. Stueckl is the principal director of the Passion play. Last to take the stage, was experimental archeologist Dominique Goerlitz, who took the audience on a cruise aboard the ABORA, a reed boat re-built from prehistoric plans.

For the second part of the evening, Andrian Kreye asserted points of view, picked up core aspects from each speaker’s inspiration and drove the conversation towards uniting principles of the 5 speakers: their understanding of leadership, the future of social values, perspectives on innovation and knowledge processing. THE OTHERS resulted in an analytical yet emotional discussion. The evening that was considered highly inspirational by the 75 invited guests – check out the photos and the video (in German) for some impressions of the evening. Based on to the success of the experiment we are going to take this platform to the next level. So watch out for more of THE OTHERS in 2011!

 Click here to see a slideshow of THE OTHERS